Fifteen Meaning
/ˈfɪf.tiːn/Definition, CEFR level A1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
numThe cardinal number occurring after fourteen (14) and before sixteen (16).
nounAn Irish traybake made with crushed digestive biscuits, marshmallows and glacé cherries combined with condensed milk and desiccated coconut.
Sentence Examples
Chestnuts have to be boiled for at least fifteen minutes.
Each party shall consist of no less than fifteen people.
She was crowned queen at the age of fifteen.
CEFR Practice Quiz
There were exactly ____ students enrolled in the advanced calculus class this semester.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
He has lived in this small mountain village for ____ years and knows every single resident by name.
Word Origin & History
PIE word *pénkʷe Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *pénkʷe Proto-Germanic *fimf Proto-Indo-European *déḱm̥ Proto-Germanic *tehun Proto-Germanic *fimftehun Anglian Old English fīftīene Middle English fiftene English fifteen From Middle English fiftene, from Old English fīftīene, fīftēne, from Proto-Germanic *fimftehun. Cognate with West Frisian fyftjin, Dutch vijftien, German fünfzehn, Danish femten. Equivalent to five + -teen.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"The fifteen men are, of course, the fifteen allies and the dead man's chest is the strategic principle on which their alliance is founded and which is now moribund."
— 1960 December 17, C.I. Sulzberger, “Fifteen Men on the Dead Man's Chest”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 04 Aug 2025:
"She was, in fact, constitutionally impervious to statistics and preferred to study the be-headphoned group of fifteen or so lethargic wanderers who were taking even less notice of the remorseless squawkings than she was."
— 1968, Christopher Hodder-Williams, “Hands”, in Fistful of Digits, London: Coronet Books, published 1972, →ISBN, page 125:
"I first sipped an El Presidente fifteen years ago, in Havana, at a sidewalk café across from a vendor selling postcards of Che Guevara. It was revelatory."
— December 2019/January 2020, Wayne Curtis, “Discover Cuba’s Other Rum Cocktail: El Presidente”, in Garden & Gun, archived from the original on 15 Aug 2021:
Explore More A1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
There were exactly ____ students enrolled in the advanced calculus class this semester.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
He has lived in this small mountain village for ____ years and knows every single resident by name.